Serious people from around the
world are starting to take a closer look

at the quality of writers, books, and a
national literature coming out of St. Martin.

Lasana M. Sekou Frank
Martinus Arion

Lasana
Sekou in Oxford Poetry Book

and Caribbean Encyclopedia

By
Jacqueline Sample

GREAT BAY, St. Martin (February 21,
2006)—St. Martin poet/author Lasana M. Sekou started 2006 the
way he ended 2005, featured in another important book on
Caribbean literature and culture.

In January 2006, the double-volume
Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature, the first of its kind, was
published in the US and in the UK by Greenwood Press. “I am
happy that the editor of the first encyclopedia of Caribbean
Literature selected Lasana as one of the literary people to
write about.

“To be in this book means that a St. Martin
author is considered as one of the important writers of our
region,” said Rhoda Arrindell, literature instructor at the
University of St. Martin (USM).

The hardcover encyclopedia consists of a
whopping 1,016 pages of text, photos, and maps. D.H. Figueredo
—author, researcher, and director of the Library and Media
Center at Bloomfield College—edited the Encyclopedia of
Caribbean Literature. The two volumes, size 7 x 10, are sold for
$199.95.

The acclaimed Cuban scholar Emilio Jorge Rodríguez
wrote Sekou’s profile. “Serious people from around the world
are starting to take a closer look at the quality of writers,
books, and a national literature coming out of St. Martin.

“This should inspire more writers and
writings from the island in a strong way,” said Arrindell, who
also heads the language division at USM. The two-volume tome
includes more than 700 entries written by over 20 experts.

“In this month of celebrating history, we
can say that Lasana is making some more history for his St.
Martin people by being featured with the greats like St. John
Perse, Derek Walcott, Nicolas Guillen, George Lamming, Leon
Damas, Anton de Kom, the Naipaul Family, Pedro Mir, Maryse Conde,
Kamau Brathwaite, Frantz Fanon, and Fidel Castro—all of whom
are featured in the encyclopedia.”

In addition to the legion of authors, the
publication profiles the region’s literary and socio-cultural
movements, among other critical, interconnected aspects of its
history, culture, and politics from, refreshingly, every
language zone and the Caribbean Diaspora (prior to the early
1800s and up to the present).

The Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature also
reveals how the region’s literature and socio-cultural
dynamics continue to impact not only Caribbean people but
writers; literature, music, and art; and socio-cultural and
political developments throughout the world.

When Oxford Speaks?

In December 2005, Sekou’s poem
“Liberation Theology” (Mothernation, 1991) was published in The
Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. This is the newest anthology
of Caribbean literature. The editors, Stewart Brown, a
London-based poet and critic and Dr. Mark McWatt, an
award-winning author and UWI professor of literature, cover 100
years of poetry that they consider to have been among the best
and most telling of the last century of Caribbean reality and
aesthetics.

To the editors, “The Caribbean has produced
what is arguably the most vigorous and exciting body of poetry
in the twentieth century, and this anthology will be the first
to cover all its major languages.” The 440-page book further
covers from the established “to less acclaimed poets of the
20s, 30s, and 40s, and exciting new voices from the 80s and
90s.”

Fabian Badejo, an impatient advocate for the
Caribbean to become the primary publishing center for its own
literature, and who broke the news here about the book on the
Culture Time radio program last December, said that, “Oxford
is still a citadel of Caribbean literary publishing.

“When Oxford University Press publishes a
selection of Caribbean poets it is an announcement to the world
about who’s who in a region that has produced an unprecedented
amount of winners of the Nobel prize in literature given both
its small geographic and population size.”

According to the London Guardian newspaper,
The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse is a “wonderful
beginner’s guide to the amazing riches of Caribbean poetry”
in which “The editors provide an excellent, comprehensive
introduction.”

There Is More

If the above literary news was not enough
about recent highlights in the progress of St. Martin writing,
the US-based NewPages.com, a key portal of independent and
university presses, has just listed Sekou’s newest book, 37
Poems, as one of its current “New & Noteworthy Books.”

Here are two more news bytes to
“celebrate” St. Martin’s literature. Drisana Debbie Jack,
photograph and all, and her new book Skin, appeared in The New
York Amsterdam News of February 9, alongside her stellar seniors
Austin Clarke (Barbados/Canada) and Frank Martinus
(Curacao) – all three authors fresh from Winternachten 2006 in
The Hague. Secondly, the just-released tourism magazine St.
Maarten/St. Martin Experience 2006 is also attempting to tap
into and share with visitors what is authentic St. Martin
culture with a short “wordsmiths” write-up, highlighting the
poem “Salt pond” by Esther Gumbs (Tales From the Great Salt
Pond, 1996).

The Amsterdam News article by media
specialist Misani and the Gumbs-Bradshaw poem in Experience 2006
were facilitated through House of Nehesi’s promotions of St.
Martin’s artists and writers.

Jacqueline Sample is president of House of
Nehesi Publishers Foundation, St. Martin, and Black Dimensions
in Art, Inc., New York

The Caribbean is a part of
the world with diverse cultures and a long and fascinating
literary tradition. The people of this region have endured
through civil strife, poverty, natural disasters, and military
conflicts; and their literature reflects their despair and
dreams. Accessible to students and general readers, this
encyclopedia overviews the lives and works of Caribbean authors.

Because Caribbean
literature is so much a reflection of regional concerns, the
encyclopedia gives special attention to the political, cultural,
and historical contexts in which Caribbean authors have lived
and worked. To help with this massive endeavor, scholar and
librarian Danilo H. Figueredo has assembled an impressive team
of advisors and authors. Included in the encyclopedia are more
than 700 alphabetically arranged entries written by more than 20
expert contributors. These entries cover authors, works, genres,
historical and cultural figures, themes, and various special
topics.

Frank Martinus Arion (pseudonym of Frank
Efraim Martinus) was born in 1936 in Curacao. In 1955 he moved to
the Netherlands where he studied at, and subsequently worked for,
the Institute for Dutch Studies. He returned to Curacao in 1981
where he is the director of the Language Bureau, which
promotes the use and recognition of Papiamento, a pidgin language
of the Antilles.

For Arion the primary function of literature is
to provide readers with a critical knowledge of reality. At the
same time Arion wants to 'captivate his readers to the extent of
burning their cooking on the stove' as he writes gripping, finely
constructed political thrillers.

The base for his novel, Dubbelspel (Double
Play), is the colonial relationship between the Netherlands and
the Antilles. The six main characters represent the lower classes
of the Antillian population, with a pair of idealistic lovers
finally devoting themselves to the social and political upliftment
of their island Curacao, reflecting the author's vision of the
future.

The same idealism appears in De laatse
vrijheid where the main character defies death through sheer
willpower. "In this book the author has created a world in
which one can momentarily forget the real world. Right from the
start to the very end Arion keeps the reader in suspense" .
Dubbelspel was awarded the Lucy B. and C.W. van der Hoogt Prize in
1974 and it has been translated into German, Danish and English

Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy."

Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits.

Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly

The use of the nation’s
mother language, “the way we speak naturally on both parts
of our island, is the sweetness to the ear and the heart of
Miss Yaya’s spoken word, storytelling, and talks about St.
Martin’s folkways,” said Jacqueline Sample, president of
House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP). Richards had completed
working on The Frock with HNP at the time of her death at
age 55, on May 26, 2010 – about four months before the book
was published. The plan to launch the
book on the UNESCO-declared day in 2011 came out of meetings
between the culture department, the publisher, and Yaya’s
family representatives Priscille Figaro, Adrienne Richards,
and Laurellye Benjamin.

“We need to recognize
our artists like Yaya who are working so hard for our people
and our identity,” said Dormoy. “It’s an honor to be
involved with this book as part of Yaya’s legacy that can
live on, and to launch The Frock in connection with the
International Mother Language Day,” said Dormoy.

The
hard cover book, a primer about St.
Martin’s culture, historical
personalities and natural environment,
is listed on the US government
department’s Bureau of
Administration website. “We think this
is a good thing to share with the St.
Martin people,” said Sekou. “In fact,
House of Nehesi is firstly thankful to
the St. Martin people for continuing to
read, enjoy and study this book.
“Having National Symbols listed as
recommended reading in the IPS section
of the US State Department adds to the
venues where folks abroad can be put in
touch with original material about St.
Martin and the St. Martin people.” The
material from the book continues to be
used for popular events such as
carnival, for research by scholars, as
teaching material in schools, and for
presentations by government and tourism
departments, churches and civic groups.